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OakleyThe wedding ritual always takes place during the last full night of the Harvest Festival. Tomorrow, and well into tomorrow night, everyone from the tribes and packs scattered across the Deadlands will pack up and depart for home, wherever that may be. I’ve always been fascinated by weddings here. It’s a group ceremony with all of the engaged or handfasted couples who met and married quickly over the winter months, and occasionally the mates who met during the spring mating balls. Mates who met during this festival season’s mating balls also, occasionally, have a chance to join the ceremony, but some do wait until next year, choosing to handfast so more time can be taken to pay bride prices and make dresses for the grand event. The whole pack comes to watch the ceremony. The wedding takes place on the top of the hill the festival surrounds. Below, friends, family, and packmates gather to watch the circle of couples be blessed by priestesses and say their rites and formal vows.

Winter Arrives

Oakley“Oakley,” Ian whispers, his voice filling the dreamscape I’ve been languishing in for the better part of the last hour. I open my eyes to our ceiling and faint silver light floating across the golden-brown logs. “It’s snowing.”I sit up to look over his shoulders at the window beside our bed, where, sure enough, thick snowflakes fall in dizzying spirals. Beyond the window, the closest trees catch the snow, and their branches are now a bright white. Cold mist coats the corners of the windows, and ice crystals creep across the glass panes. Winter has come. There was a time when neither of us thought we’d see it again. I rest my chin on his shoulder. Instead of going back to sleep for another hour or two, we lie there side by side and watch the snow accumulate, both of us silently making mental lists of chores that still need to be done to prepare for the next several months of cold and snow. The harvest season is over. Ian won’t be splitting his time between hunting and the mi

Fate

NaomiMoonrise gleams under a light snowfall. The golden city shines in shades of silver, and the neon reach of shop signs and streetlights casts a multicolor blur through the fourth-story windows of my mom’s office in the palace. She rises from her desk, but her gaze is locked on the piece of paper clutched between her hands. I glance away from the window, eyeing her progress across the room to where she comes to a stop near the main doors and carefully folds the paper, slips it in an envelope, and stamps it with hot, tacky wax, stamping it with our family’s royal crest. She drops the envelope in a box, where one of her many assistants will find it in the morning and mail it. To where? Beats me. I avoid all mention of paperwork if possible. It seems against nature, all witchy things considered. “You’re up awfully late,” Mom murmurs. She glides in my direction but takes a seat on one of the bright red velvet couches in the center of her office instead, arching to pour herself a cup

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Winter Arrives

Fate